1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for evaluating the technical ability of a to-be-examined person and more particularly relates to a system for determining and evaluating the abilities of a to-be-examined person to design a technical system and to construct an actual apparatus using a computer.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, in various technical fields, private and public organizations have sponsored ability examinations and have given certain recognitions to people who have the abilities and, for example, they have given certain qualifications to people who passed the examinations. In this case, persons who have certain qualifications such as the qualification of Information Processing engineer have advantages in finding employment over persons having no qualification, and therefore it is deemed that this kind of ability examination systems will be increasingly conducted in more technical fields, in the future.
In reality, there is no system for objectively examining and evaluating the ability of a person who is involved in designing of, for example, an automatic manufacturing line for products or various types of automatic apparatuses for the lines and also in constructing automatic apparatuses having desired performance on the basis of the design (hereinafter, referred to as “an automation engineer”) (the reason for this will be described later).
An automatic apparatus is temporally defined here as an apparatus which autonomously performs target operations on the basis of certain programs (software) and description of such an automatic apparatus will be given later when a concrete definition thereof is required.
The history of automation technologies can be classified into first to fourth generations, wherein the fourth generation is a generation which is expected to grow. Technical evaluations which form the substance of the present invention are based on the technologies of the respective generations and, therefore, the automation technologies of the respective generations will be described hereinafter.
Automation technologies can be conceptually represented as follows.
Referring to FIG. 4, in an automatic apparatus for causing an apparatus element (tool/designated by the character T) to perform desired operations for a certain object (work/designated by the character W) such as a mechanical member, for example, moving the work W that is the object to a predetermined position, there is provided a tool driving/controlling portion 50 consisting of a mechanism M (designated by the character M) for causing the tool T to perform predetermined operations, an actuator (designated by the character A) for providing a driving force to the mechanism M, a controller (designated by the character C) for controlling the operation of the actuator A and a sensor (designated by the character S) for providing predetermined information to the controller C through feedback control.
In the first generation, the mechanism M is configured to be of a non-uniform-conversion type (Mb) constituted by hinges and slides or the like. The actuator A for driving the mechanism M which is of the non-uniform-conversion type Mb is of a constant-velocity type Aa selected from motors which rotates at a constant speed or cylinders with piston rod which linearly moves. Accordingly, the controller C for controlling the actuator A which is of the constant-velocity type Aa is of an ON/OFF type Ca and the sensor S is of an ON/OFF type Sa capable of acquiring information about the operation of the mechanism M (indicated by the number 51) which is of the non-uniform-conversion type Mb.
Namely, in the first generation, the operation of the actuator A which performs simple constant-velocity operations Aa is converted into operations such as a velocity reduction at the stroke end through a crank mechanism, a rapid return through a lever-slider mechanism or a prevention of return through a toggle mechanism and the like to realize an ingenuity of the mechanism. The present inventors describe the first generation as “a generation of circles and straight lines” in many technical books and the like. Namely, the mechanism M, the actuator A, the controller C and the sensor S (hereinafter, referred to as “M•A•C•S”) in the tool driving/controlling portion are configured as “(the non-uniform conversion type Mb)•(the constant-velocity type Aa)•(the ON/OFF type Ca)•(the ON/OFF type Sa). Namely, the M•A•C•S is configured as Mb•Aa•Ca•Sa.
The first-generation technology did not be discarded at the transition of the technology from the first generation to the second generation, and the first generation technology is still very usable now. The same is applied to the second generation and the subsequent generations which will be described later to increase the ingenuity of the apparatus. The configuration of the aforementioned mechanism Mb is a factor which significantly affects the ingenuity of the entire automatic apparatus of any of the generations including the first generation.
When the fabrication of cams was made easier with the development of machining tools, the second generation came. In the second generation, the ingenuity of the non-uniform conversion Mb of the mechanism M was improved by configuring the cam with high accuracy and complicacy. Although the M•A•C•S of the second generation is Mb•Aa•Ca•Sa similarly to the first generation, the non-uniform-conversion Mb realized by the cam used as the mechanism had significantly-improved ingenuity. Namely, it can be said that the second generation is “a generation of mechanical cams”.
It is obvious that dedicated mechanical cams must be configured for respective operations of the tool T. However, with advancing manufacturing of a wide variety of products in small quantities due to variations of markets, it had become more difficult to cope therewith by the method of fabricating respective mechanical cams with the machining tools. Namely, it can be said that the third generation is “a generation in which the second-generation mechanical cam was changed to an information cam”.
Namely, there was a need for a method which enables fabricating the cam with enhanced softness and the third generation realized that.
From a viewpoint of the functions of the second-generation cam, the cam had two functions which are “the function of transferring forces” and “the function of possessing information about position/time”, thus enabling transferring the driving force of the actuator A through the mechanical cam to cause the tool T to perform predetermined operations.
On the contrary, the information cam is configured only to possess information while “the transfer of forces” is implemented through a servo.
Thus, an information cam configured only to possess information is realized in the following aspects.
(a) “template cam” like a cut-out paper pattern
(b) “picture cam” which is simply a drawn picture
(c) “software cam” stored in a memory of a computer
Particularly, in the case of a software cam, when the product item is to be changed over, it is possible to achieve changeover of the cam (changeover of the cam curve) within an extremely short time by operating the computer through key-board inputting or through item-changeover signals from the outside, thus enabling largely enhancing the flexibility of the automatic apparatus.
Consequently, in the third generation, the mechanism M is mainly of a uniform-conversion type Ma, the actuator A is of a variable-velocity type Ab such as a servomotor, the controller C is of a numerical-quantity type Cb for controlling the actuator A of the variable-velocity type Ab, and the sensor S is of a measurement type Sb which outputs information of measurement values for ensuring the controlled operation with the controller C of the measurement type Cb, wherein the measurement information is, for example, the operation information 52 about the actuator A of the variable-velocity type Ab. Namely, the M•A•C•S is Ma•Ab•Cb•Sb.
As described above, the performance of automatic apparatuses has improved in terms of ingenuity and flexibility and the like, with the transitions from the first to the third generations. However, there were problems common to these three generations. That is, apparatuses of any of these generations can perform proper operations on the precondition that the condition of the to-be-operated work W and tool T is maintained constant (hereinafter, referred to as “work side consistency”).
For example, when the work side consistency is maintained, such as when all of the to-be-operated works W have an identical shape and are placed at the same position, the aforementioned apparatuses of the respective generations can repeatedly perform ingenious operations at high speeds.
However, in the event of the occurrence of changes of the condition of the works W, such as deviation of the position at which the works W are placed, partial differences of the shapes of the individual works and stop of feeding of the works W to the tool T, namely in the event of impairment of the work side consistency, malfunctions will occur as follows. For example, the works W can not be properly handled with predetermined operations of the tool T, the works W can not be handled at all, or the predetermined operations are repeatedly performed even though there exists no work W. These problems may be caused by changes of the condition of the tool T such as wear of the tool T, as well as by changes of the works W.
Namely, the automatic apparatuses of the first to third generations are identical in the respect that they repeatedly perform the same operations for the same type of works. Even though the third-generation apparatus employing an information cam has significantly-improved flexibility in the respect that the cam can be rapidly changed, the respective cams are associated with the operations of the tool T with one-to-one relationship and also the third-generation apparatus operates relying on the work side consistency, similarly to the first and second generations.
In view of the aforementioned facts, the forth-generation apparatus forms a tool driving/controlling portion 50 configured to check the condition of the work W, detect the operating condition of the tool T which handles the work W and properly set and control the operation of the tool T in accordance with the condition of the work W and tool T.
Namely, as indicated by the numbers 53 and 54, the tool operating/controlling portion 50 is configured such that the sensor S directly acquires information about the work W and/or the tool T from the work W or the tool T and, on the basis of the information, the tool T is caused to perform proper operations in accordance with the conditions of the work W or the tool T. The forth-generation apparatus is configured by incorporating algorisms for determining the amount of movement of the tool T and/or the direction of driving of the tool T and the like in accordance with the condition of the work W or the tool T into the controller C of the tool driving/controlling portion 50 in order to enable ingenious control of the actuator A for properly controlling the operation of the tool T anytime.
Accordingly, the tool driving/controlling portion 50 is structured such that the mechanism M is of a uniform-conversion type Ma, the actuator A is of a variable-velocity type Ab such as a servo motor, the controller C is of a numerical-quantity type Cb, the sensor S is of a measurement type Sb, similarly to that of the third generation, wherein the setting for detection of the condition of the work W (the arrow 53) and/or the setting for detection of the condition of the tool T (the arrow 54) are utilized to make feedback signals and further the operation information 51 and 52 of the mechanism M and the actuator A is also utilized as required.
The automation technologies have been successively advanced from the first generation to the forth generation as described above. With advancing technologies, the number of automation engineers who deal with these technologies has been increased and such automation engineers have been required to have higher technical skills, year by year. Further, it is deemed that needs for automation engineers will be further increased in the future for realization of laborsaving, manufacturing of a wide variety of products in small quantities and consistency of products and the like in business organizations and the like. From this view point, business organizations which are employers eagerly desire to know the actual grades of skills of people referred to as automation engineers. However, at the present time, there is no system for evaluating the skills of automation engineers and for giving certain qualifications.
This is because of the following reasons.
For example, in the case of information processing engineers for whom there exist ability evaluation systems, the subjects of evaluations are substantially limited to software such as development and processing of software in essence. On the contrary, in the case of automatic apparatuses, the mechanisms constituting the apparatus and the software for operating the mechanisms are associated with each other in a complicated manner. Furthermore, there are various types of skills of automation engineers such as the ability to design an apparatus, the ability to construct an actual apparatus, the abilities for testing the performance of the constructed actual apparatus and to modify and repair it on the basis of the result of test. Therefore, there are a great number of determination factors for evaluating the skills of automation engineers, and the evaluations are complicated. Consequently, it will be necessary to process an enormous amount of information and thus the subjects of evaluations must be limited in advance in the case of manually conducting such evaluations. Further, since proper evaluations have been impossible at the present time for various reasons such as the difficulty of eliminating arbitrariness in evaluations, it has been considered that it is actually impossible to evaluate the skills of automation engineers objectively and fairly even though there has been strong needs therefore.
Next, in the case of mainly evaluating the automation-engineer's skills of constructing a mechanism or the like or mainly evaluating their skills about software for operating a mechanism, it is necessary to select and set questions suitable for such evaluations. Further, in the case of evaluating the ability of constructing an actual apparatus on the basis of the performance of the constructed actual apparatus, it is necessary to process and evaluate various types of items and, for example, it is necessary to process measured performance data about the actual apparatus. This will require an automated processing system employing a computer. However, there has not existed such a system at all prior to the present invention.
Namely, automation engineers are required to have various types of abilities as follows.
(1) the ability to select and design mechanisms constituted by selecting from a great number of combinations of hinges and slides
(2) the ability to design mechanical cams for realizing various types of operation characteristics
(3) the ability to design means for driving an electrical actuator such as an alternating-current motor, a direct-current motor, a solenoid and many others
(4) the ability to design means for driving a fluid actuator such as an air cylinder, a rotary actuator and many others
(5) the ability to design means for driving a pulse driven actuator such as a servo motor, a stepping motor and the like
(6) the abilities to select various types of sensors such as photoelectric sensors, magnetic sensors and the like, select the portions for detections and select signal functions
(7) the ability to program the setting of input and output of the control by a programmable sequence controller
(8) the ability to set the input and output of control by a computer and to program therefor
(9) the ability to set and design an input/output interface circuit along with the aforementioned (7) and (8)
The aforementioned items (1) to (9) are items which make respective specialized fields and, in actual, some of the items are treated as independent education subjects in universities and professional schools in technical fields.
The aforementioned items (1) to (9) are all means for attaining objects and automation engineers are required to have the abilities to select/set or design optimum items from the respective items and combine them. However, in practice, all engineers who have considerable knowledge do not have excellent ability to construct an overall system according to the object.
From the aforementioned viewpoints, it is likely that it is impossible to determine the actual ability to construct systems with the method of “determining the ability on the basis of means” which determines the technical abilities individually for the aforementioned respective means, since the method involves extremely a great number of determination factors, thus making the description of evaluations significantly complicated and also it is impossible to evaluate the ability to combine optimum selections for objects.
The present invention is characterized in that the evaluation is basically structured by “designation of target operation characteristics” for the to-be-examined person and “verification of the target attainment level” on the basis of the apparatus constricted by the person, in order to “determine on the basis of the target” and also in that, in order to attain the basic structure, significantly-complicated determination factors are all processed by a computer for making the determination of the overall technical ability of the to-be-examined person easy and accurately and also for enabling objective determinations.
Further, for the controller out of the constituent elements of the aforementioned automated apparatus, the following evaluation and determination have been locally conducted. That is, in the case of simple control using a programmable sequencer, a simple mechanism portion which operates with the sequencer is prepared and the technical ability to construct a program for driving the mechanism portion with the sequencer is evaluated and determined. As evidenced by the above description, this is far from the determination of the skill of an automation engineer. In other words, only limited skills can be evaluated with conventional methods which do not employ W. T. MACS overall automation evaluation systems with computers.
Although there has been found no prior-art technique similar to the present invention in terms of the technical field as previously described, the following Patent Documents are listed as literatures relating to the present invention. The following Patent Document 3 discloses a system in which designs are made using a computer and technical evaluations are conducted on the basis of the contents of the designs. However, this system merely determines and evaluates the content of designs made using the computer and does not have the viewpoint of constructing an actual apparatus or machine on the basis of the designs and evaluating the performance of the apparatus or machine for comprehensively evaluating the technical ability of the to-be-examined person. This is considered to be naturally resulted from the fact that Patent Document 3 aims at evaluating the ability to effectively utilize predetermined “designing software”, namely the ability for the utilization of the software. Consequently, the “designing software” is different from “designing means” according to the present invention, which will be described later.    [Patent Document 1] JP-A No. 2002-024451    [Patent Document 2] JP-A No. 2002-132839    [Patent Document 3] JP-A No. 2004-110333
In automation techniques, it is most important to properly select elements from respective groups of, tools T which is moved in accordance with target operations for the work W, and mechanisms M, actuators A, controllers C and sensors S for realizing the movement of the tool T and also construct the apparatus with the elements, and the system for evaluating the skills of automation engineers is required to properly evaluate these points.
For these points, there are many items to be considered such as the velocity characteristics and force characteristics, the cycle time of movement, the amount of movement, the accuracies of movement and stoppage, the characteristics changes due to the changes of the load and the friction coefficient, the setting of interlock with respect to the operations of other mechanisms which cooperate therewith, the setting of overlap of the operation and the like. Proper evaluations must be conducted in terms of such items.
For setting relating to the aforementioned items, it is necessary to actually construct an apparatus using actual equipment, operate the apparatus and verify it for inspecting whether or not the accuracy of the actual apparatus matches the theoretical accuracy, as well as merely setting values on paper. Namely, there is a need for equipment for enabling construction of an actual apparatus for evaluating the skill (practical skill) of constructing an actual apparatus and a system for evaluating the performance of the actual apparatus constructed using the equipment. Also, it is necessary to incorporate such a practical-skill evaluation system into the skill evaluation system.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a skill evaluation system using a computer which is made for overcoming the aforementioned problems and includes at least means for determining the ability to design, out of determination means for determining the ability of a to-be-examined person to design, assembling equipment for assembling an actual apparatus according to the content of the design, means for measuring the performance of the assembled actual apparatus and means for determining the ability of the to-be-examined person to construct an actual apparatus from the measurement data acquired by the measuring means.